


Iterated Games

by primeideal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: rarepair_shorts, F/M, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Summer Wishlists 2012.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iterated Games

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maurice](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=maurice).



> Prompt: A beautiful mind.

The first decade or so he goes to all the classes he can.

It's not like there's much else to do at a wizarding school. And he has to admit, without the demands of assignments, the stresses of examinations, and all the tedious doings of mortals, listening to lectures is quite pleasant. After a while, the teachers can rely on him to fill in their errors. But it's not too much longer until he's heard the lectures so many times that, even without the assignments to reinforce them, it gets boring.

Still, he can't resist helping out the early generations of Slytherins with their homework once in a while. He is magic itself—he is pure of blood (well, he was when he had blood) and now full of the knowledge of the past, and centuries after they are useless dust he will still be full.

She, of course, spurns it—spurns him, spurns Hogwarts once she can. At one point—seven centuries? Eight? But what's a couple hundred years between lovers?—she tries to escape the school, flit beyond Scotland in the hint of the wind.

Of course, she makes it without any trouble—ghosts can travel much farther than that. They made it back from Albania, after all. And the Headless Hunt is always roaming around the world and adding more members. Though not, the Baron notes with some satisfaction, that spineless (and now, every other body part-less) coward of a Gryffindor. And so she arrives at Oxford and sits in the back, listening, trying to learn something new.

At first they hear from her every once in a while. The students—bright-eyed Ravenclaws, like their wisdom will get them anywhere!—giggle at her reports, passed back from other ghosts who drop in on Deathday Parties. But then months and years go by with no news, and he takes it upon himself to find her. It's always him, stuck with that.

He drifts south, out of the highlands and into the stench of the Muggle world. When he finds her huddled in a cupola, she is—somehow—a shadow of her more recent former self.

"What happened?" he barks, and then, "I can't do anything, can I? Tell me what happened?"

"They—Muggles. They don't  _see_ ," she stammers.

"You," he hisses, "are a  _ghost_!"

"Away—away from magic—I can't tell what's real. There's only one girl who's seen me and they say she's gone mad. I can't—I don't know anymore if I'm just imagining the students, the teachers. I hear the lectures—I hear the voice—but the chalk might as well be a hallucination."

"You are a  _ghost_. You do not belong here."

"I'm dead," she sighs. "I don't belong  _anywhere_."

He reaches for her hand and feels a chill—her face hardens, growing more pointed, more solid.

"Helena," he says, in what passes for him squeezing the lifeless hand. "Come back."

She doesn't argue, in the end, but follows listlessly. Once or twice he tries dragging her along again—it doesn't make her move any  _faster_ , but the shock of his touch is enough to jolt her back to awareness and continue on.

When they get back, he drops in on History of Magic classes again. Just to catch up—there's probably been a bit of current affairs he's missed, haunting the place. And from time to time, she floats by the Arithmancy classes, still lost in thought.

But not so far lost that, between the two of them, they cannot find her way home.

"Thank you," she finally says one day.

He bows low, very carefully, so carefully that his chains do not move. "You are welcome."

It's a slow start, but it isn't like he's in any rush.


End file.
